The dominion of the dead: power dynamics and the construction of Christian cultural memory at the fourth-century martyr shrine
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This thesis is aimed at addressing a lacuna in previous scholarship on the development of the martyr cult in the pivotal fourth century. Recent work on the martyr cult has avoided a diachronic approach to the topic. Consequently through their synchronic approach, issues of the early fifth century have been conflated and presented alongside those from the early fourth, with little discussion of the development of the martyr cult during the intervening decades. One aim of this work is to address the progression of the martyr cult from its pre-Christian origins through its adaptations in the fourth and early fifth century. Through a discussion of power dynamics with a critical eye towards the political situation of various influential figures in the fourth and early fifth centuries, this thesis demonstrates the ways in which Constantine, Damasus, Ambrose, Augustine, and others sought to craft cultural memory around the martyr shrine. Many of them did this through the erection of structures over pre-existing graves. Others made deliberate choices as to which martyrs to commemorate. Some utilized the dissemination of the saints’ relics as a means to expanding their own influence. Finally several sought to govern which behaviours were acceptable at the martyrs’ feasts. In nearly every instance these choices these men advanced their own agendas. In many cases the martyr cult was a decisive tool for the augmentation and solidification of civil and religious authority. Despite their goals these men were unable to create the uniformity they desired within the martyr cult. The meaning associated with the graves of the saints could never be determined unidirectionally. Meaning and the power to influence others through the martyr cult was the product of a dialogue. That dialogue included the leaders and the laity in the Christian community as well as a new group: pilgrims. Pilgrimage created a network within Christianity which ultimately led to a catholic Christian cultural memory surrounding the martyrs’ graves. This homogenized understanding of the martyr cult enabled it to become one of the most identifiable features of Christianity in subsequent centuries.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.009 | 0.033 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.008 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".